command line tool

Synaptic is a front-end for the apt package management system. The program allows you to perform all actions of the command line tool apt-get in a graphical environment such as installing, upgrading, downgrading and removing of single packages or even upgrading your whole system. The upcoming Ubuntu Linux version 11.10 (code named Oneiric Ocelot) has removed Synaptic Package Manager.[click to continue…]

How do I update and patch system under Ubuntu Linux? How do I update desktop and server edition software?

Updating software under Ubuntu Linux is pretty easy. There are two ways to update software as follows:

Method # 1: Ubuntu Linux Software update using command line tools

apt-get is the command-line tool for handling packages, updating package and installing patches under Ubuntu Linux. All you have to do is type the following two command to update all installed software to latest version.

Method # 2: GUI tool – Ubuntu Update Manager

This is a GUI tool. It works like Microsoft / Red Hat / Fedora update manager i.e. you will see a little icon in the kicker bar/taskbar when there are updates available. It will only appear when new upgrades are available. All you have to do is click on it and follow the online instructions.

atool is a script for managing file archives of various types such as .zip, tar.gz and all other formats. From the article:

Atool uses other tools behind the scenes to perform the heavy lifting. With atool, you can handle any archive without having to remember what command-line tool to use to expand it and which options that particular tool expects. Atool comes with a collection of commands, including aunpack, apack, als, acat, adiff, and arepack. The tools are all links to the main atool Perl script, but they perform the actions that their name suggests — for example, unpacking or creating a new archive.

Download atool

There is a nice utility to monitor hard drive temperature. Most modern x86 computer hard disk comes with S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology). It is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.[click to continue…]

However, none of them offers a password to protect files. You can use GNU gpg (GNU Privacy Guard) encryption and signing tool. It is a suite of cryptographic software. Many new UNIX/Linux users get confused with this fact.

Solution is to use following commands to encrypt or decrypt files with a password.

mcrypt command

Mcrypt is a simple crypting program, a replacement for the old unix crypt. When encrypting or decrypting a file, a new file is created with the extension .nc and mode 0600. The new file keeps the modification date of the original. The original file may be deleted by specifying the -u parameter.

Examples

Encrypt data.txt file:$ mcrypt data.txt Output:

Enter the passphrase (maximum of 512 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
Enter passphrase:
Enter passphrase:

openssl command

OpenSSL is a cryptography toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) network protocols and related cryptography standards required by them. You can use the openssl program which is a command line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL’s crypto library from the shell. It can be used for encrypt and decrypt files with a password: